The present invention relates to a battery module and a battery managing system thereof, especially, to a battery module suitable to use such as power supply for power failure to such a system for backing up data of computer system etc. and a battery managing system thereof.
In various equipment, devices or computer systems, the battery for the emergency is prepared for a power failure in addition to a main power supply. Moreover, a use of the battery is not limited to such an emergency case, and the battery is used widely as a power supply for the system.
The use state of this battery is occasionally managed by using the microprocessor etc. in consideration of maintenance of the system function or the importance of the data backup.
In this case, hardware and software are divided according to the function. For instance, the battery is composed of the unit which can be exchanged as a module (Hereafter, called the battery module). And, the state of this battery module is managed by the microprocessor module etc. which contain the microprocessor. Here, state information to be managed includes time that the battery was built in the system, the remainder of the battery amount, the present status of the battery, and the situations of the occurrence of the power failure, etc. The microprocessor judges the situation of the charge and discharge of the battery by regularly updating this state information at the exchange time of the battery.
FIG. 1 is a block diagram showing an example of the construction of the conventional battery managing system.
This battery managing system has a microprocessor module 72 and a battery module 71 which are each a unit of exchange, respectively. The battery managing system is a part of a computer system 73 such as file servers.
In the example of FIG. 1, a microprocessor module 72 has a data backup function of a computer system 73, and when a power outage occurs, makes a backup circuit 75 operate by the electric power from a battery 74 of a battery module 71.
Moreover, the microprocessor 76 in the microprocessor module 72 not only controls the backup circuit 75, but also manages information of the above-mentioned battery module 71 by using a real-time clock & nonvolatile storage section 77.
Specifically, the microprocessor 76 regularly checks the state of the output of the battery etc. The microprocessor 76 obtains time information from the real-time clock in the real-time clock & nonvolatile storage section 77 in addition based on the result of this state check and the information at the time of exchanging the battery module to generate the management information. The management information is stored in the nonvolatile memory section in the real-time clock & nonvolatile storage section 77.
In the system, one can exchange the battery and the use management function in the battery module 71 and the microprocessor module 72. Only the battery module 71 is exchanged due to lifetime and the trouble of the battery, and only the microprocessor module 72 is separately exchanged respectively due to the trouble of the microprocessor peripheral circuit etc.
Here, since the battery management information is memorized in the nonvolatile memory section in the real-time clock & nonvolatile storage section 77 in the microprocessor module 72, it is necessary to work to succeed the management information when the exchange of the microprocessor module 72 is generated. If this successive work is not done, for example, the microprocessor module 72 judges the battery under use to be a new battery module by mistake.
On the other hand, the exchange is not required from beginning of use to finish of use in the conventional battery module 71. Therefore, when the battery module 71 is exchanged by non-regular reason there is no means to detect the battery module being exchanged. The microprocessor module 72 succeeds state information (management information) on the battery before exchanging the battery. Therefore, in this case, the microprocessor module 72 cannot judge the exchanged battery as a new battery.